Amon The Good
by wormbuffet
Summary: To strike her was correct; to touch her was a crime. Amon Goeth is tempted by taboo desires. Amon/Helen. Based on the film 'Schindler's List'. Reviews much appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

_Please leave a review and let me know if you enjoyed it, I need youu._

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Amon despised her. He despised her trembling body, the flesh which constantly threatened to soil him, the skin which bruised so easily, disturbing his guests. And that was usually all he felt for her.

But sometimes, deep inside a bottle sent by the Herr Direktor, when the sweat beaded on his forehead and soaked his uniform, when the world was warm and giving to the touch, and Helen was there by his side…sometimes he loved her. She was a good servant, devoted, her cooking excellent. From within that bottle, his vision warped by the rosy, sticky glass, Helen beckoned him with needy eyes, craved his discipline. A fruit at its peak of ripeness. She dangled, sweet-smelling and pliant in his hands, maddening him until he found himself beating her to keep from kissing her.

Amon knew better than to touch her. His friend, Oskar Schindler, was known to have been close with Jews, and Amon had defended him before the Schutzstaffel when he was arrested for it. The Herr Direktor had drunkenly kissed a Jewess at a party. Amon sweated through the trial and when he returned home to his villa, Helen was the first thing he saw. Amon didn't even remove his white gloves before striking her.

God, how he hated her, and yet he couldn't kill her. Something always stayed his hand and the luger seemed to weigh a thousand pounds until he holstered it once again.

"Get up, bitch." He would finally say to the quivering mess on the floor.

The mess would pant and drag itself together and he would look away, and when he looked again, Helen Hirsch stood in its place. She would try to be silent but he could hear the blood bubble and crack in her nose when she swallowed.

There was nothing beautiful about Helen. At best, she was plain. At her worst, she was a starved, shambling ghost. Even as the bruises from her last beating faded, hunger pains stung fresh and new in her belly. Too many times to count, she hid and wept in the cellar, cradling her shrunken stomach with broken fingers. Sometimes she sucked the grease from bones before giving them to Amon's hounds, ignoring her cut lips and tongue. If Amon had ever seen her do this, the punishment would have been unimaginable.

She never gave in, not even for an instant. He reassured himself with that knowledge, dozens, maybe hundreds of times. That hard little body never relaxed or surrendered. And it was good, because it was his place to push, and hers to resist, and if she didn't resist, then it was not good and he couldn't keep her around anymore.

The first time he touched her was on the veranda. He was drunk again on gifted liquor. Schindler had left nearly an hour before, and Amon remained outside, too drunk to walk to bed. He lolled in the sun chair, drinking without thirst, listening to the roar of his own veins. The summer night was hot and he perspired freely, his hauptsturmfuhrer's tunic unbuttoned to the waist. The darkness was warm and close, like the inside of a womb, lulling him and at the same time igniting his melancholy. Nights like these drew him into morbid speculation, drunk and alone.

Helen appeared with a tray and began to clear away the empty glasses and dirty plates. Amon watched quietly as she loaded the wooden tray, enjoying the sight. His own Helen. His own little creature. He normally didn't care to watch the servants except to find excuses to hurt them, but he was drunk, and the task interested him. It was a pleasant distraction.

Helen noticed him looking and her features tightened.

"Do not…do not be afraid, little fraulein…" he muttered. He struggled to lift his legs from the sun chair and failed. And of course, Helen did not answer him. She gathered the corks from the ashtray, inclined her head, and turned to leave. He suddenly didn't want her to go.

"Stop!" he commanded. Even this drunk, Amon's voice held a frightening power. The Jewish girl froze. "Come here."

Trembling, Helen turned back around. With little footsteps, she inched closer to her lounging master. She stopped just out of reach. Amon tutted. The clever girl. It was strange to imagine these Jews as not being completely human. Fear was such a human emotion, stretched over the girl's plain features.

"Do not be afraid, little mouse." He crooned. Amon was not certain what he meant to do, but he had the strangest desire to touch her. He reached out and she flinched, the cups rattling on the tray. It gave him an idea.

"I was watching you carrying those things on your tray, and you really do it quite well. How is it that you can balance such heavy things so delicately?" He asked. Helen did not answer, only stared, wide-eyed, at the ground beside his feet. This encouraged him.

"You should be tested, yes? You have never dropped a dish as long as you've worked at my villa…" He swiftly reached out and caught the edge of her skirt, dragging her forwards. He let his hand brush up beneath the worn cloth, his fingertips dragging against the skin of her thigh. "I wonder what would make you drop one."

Helen shuddered violently, rattling spoons and glasses and setting the corks rolling between plates. He let the tips of his fingers worry their way up her leg. Jewish girls with their thin, muscular legs…so different from the soft German frauleins he had known. He could feel her muscles twitch.

"Ah, careful now…Drop it, and I'll shoot you where you stand."

With his left hand, he drew the luger from his trouser pocket and set it on his lap where she stared at it, transfixed. It was improbably heavy. He lifted it to point at her stomach, drawing her skirts up, up, higher…above her knees. A wide scar on her left knee, the smooth skin pitted. He drew them higher. No nylons, of course. The only women who had nylons these days were whores. Higher still, and the cotton shift she wore beneath her clothes sparkled in the glare of the watchtower lamp. She wept silently as he glutted himself on the sight of her. It was good this way, with her crying. It gratified the sadist within him. He found her misery arousing.

A noise brought his eyes up. The corks were rolling off the tray, all five of them in a row, dropping like bombs onto the paved terrace. They bounced around her feet. Helen remained still, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Amon fingered the trigger of the luger.

He was disappointed. Had she failed this game? The gun in his hand was shaking in his sweaty grip, so terribly heavy as it pointed at her. He looked at Helen's face, searching for a motive to kill, but couldn't find any. The terrified girl was barely breathing, only the tears on her cheeks moving.

One dripped onto his wrist.

Amon jerked his hand back with a shudder, dropping the luger, and rubbed his wrist on his tunic. The red-tinged moment was over, and he no longer desired anything at all, not even to slap her. He grimaced in disgust.

"It was only corks, little rat…I suppose that means you may live."

He retrieved the gun, and then, surprising himself, he also picked up the corks and pocketed them. Helen remained still, too afraid to move.

Amon imagined he could hear her heart beating, dull and muffled in the thick night air.

"You are dismissed. Go."

She turned and was gone. The melancholy was gone, too and his drunkenness, and Amon was able to rise and stumble to bed.


	2. Chapter 2

"Please, put it out. Please." Helen Sternlicht begged.

She was in her thirties, blonde, with coarse features but the delicate hands of seamstress. Around the house she was called Lena to distinguish her from the second, younger maid, Helen Hirsch. Sternlicht was in charge of running the house, while Hirsch did the manual labor and cooking. Hirsch had replaced her as Amon's favourite and now it was _her_ he wanted to bring him his meals, serve his guests, trim his nails. This was nothing but a relief to Sternlicht.

"You're filling the room with smoke."

Helen Hirsch ignored her. It was five-thirty in the morning. They were in the ground-floor kitchen of the villa, a spotlessly clean room with brick walls painted white, numerous bright copper and aluminum pans hanging from nails around the stove and fireplace, and baskets dangling from the wooden beams of the ceiling. It gave the room a cheerful look that was incongruous with the tension of the women who inhabited it. In the center there was a scrubbed wooden table but no chairs. Servants were expected to be on their feet in that room. A bucket of potato peelings and other scraps was kept underneath the table, to be carried out to the hounds at the end of each day. On the table there was a heavy tray partially set for breakfast with dark rolls, cold meat, and butter. Eggs were boiling on the stove.

"He'll smell it."

The other Helen was sitting on the windowsill with a bronze ashtray taken from upstairs, smoking the stub of one of Amon's cast-away cigarettes. Her eyes were red but she had cried all her tears away during the night and now they were dry and flat.

"Let me be, for God's sake." She said at last.

"I can't, he'll punish me too. Please, Helen?"

This seemed to move the dark-haired girl. She stubbed it out. Sternlicht took the ashtray and dumped it in the fire-grate, then put it in the sink.

"Was he very cruel last night?" she was calm now that the threat was gone. "You look terrible."

"He was strange." Helen replied, lowering her eyes. She picked at the hem of her apron. "He looked at me."

There was no need to say more, there was an understanding already of the disturbing interest Amon had in his younger maid. They did not speak of it.

The older, blonde Helen did not console her. Everyone suffered in Plaszow. Hirsch's torment was a grain of sand on a beach of human anguish. Sternlicht herself was suffering, having lost her family and now arthritis was beginning to prematurely stiffen the nimble hands that had won her this prized position in Amon's house. She couldn't spare the energy to sympathize with the girl. Instead, she checked the pot of eggs. They had floated to the top. She fished them out of the water and placed them in a wire basket on the tray, then removed the towel from the coffee kettle on the stove and carefully poured the contents into a tall white pot on the tray. Hirsch watched with puffy eyes.

"Could you take it up to him?"

Sternlicht stiffened. This was an impossible request. The two women knew Amon only wanted Hirsch to bring it, and any deviation from the norm would bring his wrath on them both.

"Don't be weak."

"I can't help it- I'm afraid I can't face him after last night."

"You have to. And he will be a different man now that its morning. He won't touch you."

"I know he won't…" Hirsch looked down at her hands, which were smudged with ash from Amon's cigarette.

"Take a moment and wash your hands, and then carry it up." That was as much gentleness as Sternlicht could spare.

Hirsch slid from the windowsill and went to the basin to rinse the smoke from her hands and face. Sternlicht pitied her. It had never been the same with her and Amon. He only had required obedience. What he wanted from Hirsch was much worse.

Hirsch dried her face on the dish-towel and turned to her. She looked like a spectre, washed out and pale.

"Oh, I know he's disgusting." The older woman said. "But you'll have to get through it. In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed. So hurry, bring it up and get it over with. When you come back down there will be a little time before we must start our other work…We will share the rest of the coffee." She replaced the towel over the kettle to keep the heat in. Hirsch shook her head.

"I'm already too nervous. You have it."

"You're nervous, but you should be thinking of how to survive. He wants something from you. If you're clever and strong, you could make good from it."

Hirsch looked at her with disgust and bitterness.

"What can be good? None of us will survive him."

She took the tray, which was heavy, and mounted the stairs. Sternlicht sighed. The girl was helpless if she would not first help herself.


	3. Chapter 3

Sternlicht was not always in the kitchen, her position as a household administrator taking her all over the villa during the day, so Helen Hirsch was alone in the kitchen when Amon came down at half-past five in the afternoon.

"I did not know of this dinner party, Herr Kommandant." Helen pleaded. She spread her hands in front of her, a gesture of honesty that was meaningless to him. "Please, I have received no instruction at all."

It was true that he had forgotten to tell the servants of Brauling's visit, but Amon himself had only gotten the wire the night before and her plaintive tone irritated him. He had been sober all day, drying out for this important business party, and the withdrawal made him sick and short-tempered. Through his discomfort, her voice sounded shrill and accusatory, like the squeal of a rat. He cuffed her around the head, knocking her against the stove. Luckily for her, she had not been cooking and the iron was cold.

"Shut up. There will be ten guests tonight. See that there is enough for everyone."

"With respect Kommandant, but how can I? I have not sent out for ingredients, and there is no meat here to cook-"

Amon grabbed her by the throat and choked her into silence, then continued to choke her because it felt right. Her chapped hands scratched uselessly against his until she buckled to the wooden floor, unconscious. He felt nothing for her in that moment but frustration. He was under pressure, sick, and in a dangerous mood, unpredictable even to himself. Hugo Brauling was coming to the villa that evening, whether dinner has ready or not. Brauling was one of the largest military distributers in the Reich and it was up to Amon to wine and dine this man into buying Oskar Schindler's useless Jew-made machine-gun shells, trench shovels, levers, hasps, joints and other parts. If this party went well, Amon could make a lot of money.

Amon had spent the day fighting nausea whilst conferring with Schindler on the phone, bullying the factory owner into writing a good contract that Brauling would want to sign. Schindler was a cheat first and a businessman second, but this particular contract had to be clean. The president had to sign it tonight. Which meant Oskar had not been allowed to insert his typical gaping loopholes, had not been able to mess with the percentages. It was difficult work to squeeze honesty from such a parched stone.

Then at some point he had fallen asleep and woken up only a few hours before dark, sweating and nervous. He realized then that in all of his preparations, he had forgotten to go downstairs and tell Helen about the party.

It was Amon's fault that there was nothing to cook. Nevertheless, he still needed this to go well. He needed the contract.

He nudged her with his boot impatiently. She stirred.

"Get up."

Helen shakily climbed to her feet, using the handle of the oven to steady herself.

"…Why…?" She rasped, her voice low and hoarse.

"Because you questioned me, and because you failed to carry out my order." He rubbed his face as a wave of nausea passed over him, and then leaned in closely, the tip of his nose nearly touching the dark curls tucked behind her ear. "If this is not a success, then when it is over I will take you outside and shoot you."

She stared at him in horror, hand clutching her bruised throat. He didn't care to be looked at that way, but instead of striking her again he turned and left, furious at himself for letting this happen, furious at her for making him feel like an ass.

He went upstairs and threw up, then washed his face in cold water. He was tense and irritable and it wasn't just nerves. He would have liked to have gone downstairs and hit Helen some more but she needed to cook. With trembling hands, he dressed in his formal olive uniform and combed his hair back, wishing he were drunk. The way he was now was no good. Amon knew he had a drinking problem, and now he realized he functioned better _with_ the liquor than without it. He could hardly remember a time he had gone a day without alcohol. It had seemed like a good idea to be sharp and sober. But he wasn't sharp. He was queasy and his head felt like a swamp. Shivering, he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

He hoped he would not have to follow through on his promise and shoot Helen tonight. He didn't think he could do it.

Downstairs, Hirsch went and found Sternlicht and explained the situation.

"We will have to go and get meat from our kitchens." Sternlicht said.

"Our…?" Hirsch didn't understand at first, since she stayed in the white house always. Then it dawned. The kitchens where food for the prisoners was prepared, down the hill and across the dirt yard with the rest of the camp buildings. "Oh no, no, they will know it's bad, nothing there is good enough, it's all rotten-"

"It's the only way. I'll go."

"What can I do while you're gone?" Helen had to put her faith in the older woman. She seemed to have a plan.

"You get started on dough, an egg yolk for every cup of flour. I think six cups will do. The meat will go far on spaetzle." She pointed to the colander that hung on the wall. "Wash that and we'll strain the dough through it."

She pulled down one of the large woven baskets from the ceiling beams and stuck it over her arm.

"Nobody is being shot tonight, just as long as we are resourceful."

An hour later, Amon went back down to kitchen and looked around to see what preparations had been made. There were chopped onions on the scrubbed worktable. His older housekeeper, Helen Sternlicht, was standing over Hirsch's shoulder as she browned pieces of fowl in an iron skillet. He was relieved.

"Will it be ready in time?"

"Yes, Kommandant."

And it was. Also, perhaps because of Helen's good cooking, or the wine, or the friendly woman Schindler had brought to sit on Brauling's lap, but the president signed. From that point on, the dinner party began in earnest and Amon felt he could relax. He drank a few glasses of wine and began to feel better. There were actually eleven guests that night: Hugo Brauling, four of his associates, his lawyer, two SS men who were friends with Brauling, Oskar Schindler and his Krakow mistress, and the eleventh guest; the woman he had brought as a surprise for Hugo. There was not a plate for her, but she was content to eat flirtatiously from Hugo's. Amon suspected she was a whore.

It was going very well. Then Helen came to clear the dishes, and President Brauling pushed his chair back and looked her up and down.

"Amon, is this the beauty who cooked our meal?" he asked, stroking his tobacco-stained blonde mustache. "Or is this dessert?"

"She cooked the meal." Amon responded tartly as he dared. Helen was not a beauty in the classic sense of the word. Brauling jiggled the woman on his knee, who had been introduced earlier but Amon hadn't cared to remember her name, and patted his other leg.

"Room for one more!" He called out, and then laughed. The SS men laughed, and Amon tried to smile but couldn't quite get it right. He took another drink. Of course, Hugo couldn't have known she was a Jew because Amon wouldn't let her wear the yellow star. A mistake, he decided now. He desperately wanted to warn Brauling of her blood, but how could he, without embarrassing the president and incriminating himself? There were the other SS officers to worry about. It was illegal, his foolish indulgence. It smelled like _rassenschande,_ or race defilement. It would lead to very awkward questions he wasn't certain he could answer, and even if he could, it would spell his fall from grace.

Oskar Schindler made eye contact across the table and smiled good-humoredly, but there was a warning in his grin.

 _Amon,_ his eyes seemed to say. _Do not betray yourself over this little thing._

"Yes, well, she is an excellent cook. In fact, she was just returning to the kitchen." Amon said, and glowered at Helen, who had nearly finished loading her tray of dishes. She picked up on his signal and began to leave, but Hugo clapped his hands.

"Come back, frauliene! Come back, back, back," he was red-faced with wine. "I want to kiss the girl who made such wonderful spaetzle."

Helen hesitated, obviously considering disobeying, but all eyes were on her, including Amon's, who she feared most of all. She went to Brauling, holding the tray between them. Amon was torn between disgust and self-doubt. Surely this wasn't the way he acted towards her when he himself was drunk. Surely, somehow it was different. He thought it was different. It was more of a test, of a punishing game, wasn't it?

Brauling leaned forwards to kiss her, but then stopped abruptly and frowned.

The red finger-marks showed clearly on her ropey, hungry little neck, dark against her starched white collar. It told a shameful tale. Amon nearly groaned aloud in dismay.

 _Once again she has humiliated me._

Brauling looked at him sharply, then at Helen again. Then he waved her off, rubbing his mouth uncomfortably as he digested this development. She disappeared and Amon felt like a bastard, unable to explain that she was a Jew, that the marks could be made sense of, if only he knew her ancestry. But better to appear a brute than something worse. Better for Brauling to see those marks, than to make guesses about what else was between them. Amon emptied the last bottle of burgundy into his glass and drained it.

"…Well, it appears we have drunk all of the wine." Oskar said in the uneasy lull. "May I suggest we switch to _starka_?"

"Wonderful idea!" Brauling stated as he lit a cigarette, the smoke making Amon's eyes burn the way the rest of his face did.

The party resumed.

They opened a number of bottles of cheap five-year aged _starka_ , a Polish variant of distilled vodka, which was indigenous to the region and easy to come by. Amon could not remember much after the starka. He drank greedily to cover his disgrace and blacked out before midnight, the contract nestled in his tunic pocket.

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 _Thank you for reading!_

 _This story has developed into something very different than what I had originally intended. I've made a lot of changes to the chapters and their order, and I thank you all for your patience. If you have the time, please leave a review, even if its just a sentence_ _! Hearing back from you is a thrill!_


	4. Chapter 4

_Whew! Such research, very editing. Some of the sources I am using for information conflict, so I was a bit confused about Sternlicht's last name. In quotes from Amon Goeth's trial, a woman named Helen Horowitz testified and I assumed that was the older maid. WRONG. Whoops. So I had to fix that. Also, this chapter and the previous one are based on actual events mentioned in his trial. The truth can be so fascinating and terrible._

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Helen dithered outside the door to the upstairs salon. She didn't know what to expect this morning, whether Amon would recall the uncomfortable scene with Brauling and want revenge, or if it was all forgotten now.

Six months ago, on her first night at the Villa, he had come home drunk and didn't remember picking her out of the line of women prisoners. When Helen shut the door behind him, Amon had looked at her without recognition and introduced himself. He insisted on shaking her hand, and he smiled at her, she remembered, until he realized she was a Jew. In the morning he had gone looking for her with his gun drawn. Thankfully, he was forced to go to work before he found her.

Helen hoped for forgetfulness, since there was no hope for forgiveness. Amon was incapable of it.

She pushed open the door.

Amon was waiting for her at the breakfast table, weakly illuminated in the early morning sunlight that shone from the glass doors leading to out the balcony. His hounds, Rolf and Ralf, lay at his feet. He was in uniform already and smoking a cigarette, the familiar bronze ashtray at his elbow. She went quickly to the table and began to unload the tray.

"Ah, coffee. Thank god. Put it here." He pushed some papers that he had in front of him on the table to make room for a cup and saucer. She poured without looking at him, afraid to make eye contact, and beneath the table the hounds began to whine at the scent of food. He took a cold sausage and fed pieces to them as Helen set the table. They were vicious brutes in the yard, known for tearing prisoners apart, but to Amon they were his cherished pets. He was uncharacteristically affectionate towards them and insisted that Helen save scraps and potato peelings for them in a pail to give to them every night.

When she was finished, Helen lifted the tray to leave, but his hand shot out suddenly and pulled it back down onto the table with a bang.

"Last night, I told you to be certain there was enough for all my guests." He said. "And yet the table was set a plate short."

Terror stroked an icy finger down her spine.

Amon remembered.

She watched as he took his knife and used it to stir sugar into his coffee. This was unusual; Amon had impeccable table manners. Her eyes followed the blade, sweat prickling on her scalp and under her arms, and it was so quiet she could hear the knifepoint squeal against the glass.

She did not know if she should respond or not. Before she could make up her mind, Amon continued.

"You humiliated me with your carelessness, you know." His thin lips turned down at the corners, as if pained. He looked like a snake about to strike. "Flaunting your bruises for pity. You should know I do not tolerate indiscretion in my villa."

Helen looked at him, her heart thrashing in her chest. He looked back. Amon's eyes were grey and unreadable. He held her in his gaze like a python hypnotizing a mouse. He hardly seemed to blink or breathe.

"Don't ever make that mistake again."

Then he pushed the tray towards her on the table and leaned back in his chair. The hounds stirred at his movement, rolling their black eyes nervously. Helen picked it up, eager to escape yet incapable of believing it was truly over. She turned and could feel his eyes on her still. The dark wooden door seemed too far away. She forced herself to walk with carefully measured steps to keep herself from bolting from the room in a panic. She wondered if she should have apologized and begged for forgiveness, but it was too late.

Helen reached the door. She shifted the tray to one hand and turned the knob.

As if he had been waiting for this cue, Amon flung the knife. She cringed, but his aim was viciously accurate and it struck her in the calf. It took everything in her power to keep from screaming and dropping the tray but somehow, some internal measure kept her in control. She gasped and trembled, but the tray remained stable. She straightened her leg, which was agonizing, and turned her head a little to look back at him.

He was smiling.

"You're lucky I like you." he said very quietly. Then the smile disappeared. "Go on. Get out."

She limped away in a terror, the knife still stuck fast in her calf.

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 _Please review and tell me what you think!_


	5. Chapter 5

_Thank you for reading thus far!_

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Amon was only angry for a little while. Too many other things drew his attention that day; Trains were arriving at Plaszow constantly, filled with Jews and criminals from all over Poland that needed processing. The camp suffered from problems due to the overcrowding; the latrines were overburdened, the food was short, and there wasn't enough room in the women's barracks. Yet the trains steadily came anyway. There was a lot to occupy Amon's mind and days went by too quickly for him, despite his ruthless efficiency.

Amon was still surprised when he returned to the villa and Sternlicht was the one to serve him dinner. He asked where Helen was, and the housekeeper told him she was in the cellar, and that she couldn't walk up the stairs. Amon was dismayed. The infirmary, he knew, was a deadly place and he was relieved she hadn't gone there. In an unusual gesture, Amon phoned Schindler and asked him if there were any good doctors among his Jewish labor. Schindler made it his business to know things about his workers, and luckily, he was able to give him a name and have the Jew sent over to the villa. Amon hung up feeling tense. He realized he had done more than was necessary or even appropriate for Helen. And now he owed Schindler a favor.

He went out to the balcony and lit a cigarette to ease his thoughts. Amon didn't care for doctors. He was frequently sick, with a penchant for liver pains, gout, and migraines, and doctors couldn't do much for him except warn him to drink less and diet. That wasn't a solution to Amon. The drinking helped with other things that doctors couldn't treat. He suffered from fits of melancholy, sudden mood shifts, and was prone to dark fantasies. Another thing the doctors could never cure him from was his job, which day to day was grinding him to a paste. Fifteen years in the military had warped him badly.

And yet, like the drinking, Amon would never stop. He liked it. Especially the absolute, god-like power of the position he held. He felt it when he rode around the camp and the guards and prisoners alike regarded him with fear; He possessed the life of any man he saw. They were all dead men when he looked at them. And that made up for some of what Amon had lost of himself.

Around eleven o'clock, bolstered by liquor, Amon went down to the cellar to check on Helen. It was lit only by a single, feeble bulb on the ceiling and smelled like grave soil. This was because the foundation of the villa had been dug into an ancient Jewish cemetery. The camp bath-house, delousing station, and latrines had also been constructed over the burial site. Amon hadn't thought much of the fact during building. Now, down in the dark, he felt a vague disquiet. Perhaps it was the smell. Or Helen's dark, accusing eyes from her little bed against the wall.

"Hello, Helen."

The girl began to get up but he dismissed this effort with a little wave.

"Sternlicht has told me that you are not well, and cannot do your work." He said, crossing the dirt floor and sitting on the side of the bed. "I am sorry to hear that. I sent for that Jewish doctor, Hendler, to visit you and give your leg some attention…Has he come yet?"

Helen nodded.

"That's good. Did he give you bandages? May I look?" He pulled the sheet down, his question only politeness, and pushed her shift up a little. The bandage sparkled white in the gloom, wrapped tightly around her lower calf. He nodded appreciatively. It was good work.

"Well, I can't say I would naturally trust a Jewish doctor, but he did well enough."

His eyes lingered on the gauze. She did not dare pull the sheet back up.

"You know, it is really quite odd not seeing you around the villa. I have to say, it doesn't seem right. I don't like it when you're gone." He confessed. "I hope you will be able to get around better now that you're sewed up…He did give you stitches, yes?"

She nodded again.

"How many?"

She held up her hand, minus the thumb.

"Ah, there. That's not much. It was only a little knife, and I didn't throw it hard. I didn't want to hurt you that badly. Just give you a little lesson, you know. And you've learnt it, haven't you, Helen?"

Again, she nodded her dark head of curls, her eyes fixed on him. He liked to have her attention.

"I suppose I've learned from this, too. I suppose I…need you, Helen. You have a…a way, about you, that I find…endearing?" Amon wasn't drunk but he wasn't sober, either and he struggled for words. "You mustn't make me hurt you too badly, or then you'll disappear and I'll have no-one. Except for Sternlicht, of course, but you know how she is…Old. Dumpy. Not like you…"

He put a hand out and patted her leg. He could feel her jerk at his touch. He kept it there, challenging her resistance.

"Anyway, I'm sorry you're laid up like this. I hope I'll see you tomorrow morning- actually, no… You need your rest. The day _after_ tomorrow." He smiled at his own generosity. He had never done anything like this before. It felt like a very grand gesture. He hoped she appreciated it, because it was rare. He peered in the gloom at her face, which was sweaty, searching for gratitude.

"Thank you, Herr Kommandant." She whispered. Amon smiled wider.

"Goodnight, Helen."

He withdrew his hand and stood. His shadow darkened her face and he couldn't make out the features. All around the walls, jars of dry goods and tins glittered in the paltry glare of the bulb, which buzzed slightly. It smelled wet in that room. He didn't like it. He mounted the rough staircase and as he opened the door he turned and saw she had drawn the sheets up to her chin. And she was crying.

Amon did not understand why, but he had done enough caring for Helen in one day. He went up to his own bed and slept.

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